FAMSF Blog

Madeleine Albright gave the phrase “statement jewelry” a new meaning when she used pins as a coded language with press and foreign leaders. In the spirit of our new exhibition, Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection, on view now at the Legion of Honor, we want to see how you wear your pins to tell a story.

For the past several months, visitors have studied our current textiles exhibition, Kay Sekimachi: Student, Teacher, Artist. Sekimachi’s life-long artistic endeavors were on display, including numerous textile studies, her signature monofilament sculptures, early student works and pieces created earlier this year. Visitors were encouraged to sign a guestbook for the exhibition leaving notes for Sekimachi, which will be affixed in a journal for her archives. Some of our favorite responses are below.

“Transits” is a series that looks at the movement of art in the Fine Art Museums’ collection.

We spoke to Debra Evans, head conservator, and Victoria Binder, associate conservator, about the deinstallation of Strontium, the large-scale mural by Gerhard Richter that has been a significant feature of the de Young’s new building that opened in 2005.

Read more about the challenges of moving this massive artwork, the pressure of working against the clock, and why you shouldn’t bother asking a conservator for cleaning advice.

“Indispensable” is a series that asks the de Young’s Artists in Residence to describe a tool that is essential to their work.

The headset microphone is a favorite tool of corporate presenters, motivational speakers, aerobics instructors—the peppy, the positive, people who “stay on message” and want you to “hang in there.” But it’s put to a more complicated use in Sasha Petrenko's hands. “It makes me think of TED talks, an expert who has it all figured out. But the more I learn, the less I know, and I realize I might just be better off not knowing.”

There are seven books in the Ed Ruscha and the Great American West exhibition, which provided paper conservators the opportunity to exercise our skills in mounting books in an invisible way. Though the techniques appear simple, they required a good amount of planning and collaboration to achieve the perfect combination of physical support, visual unity, and aesthetic beauty.